“When we have access to food that is grown well; when we embrace a culture of eating well; when we are empowered within our community to live well; then we greatly enhance our capacity to be well.”

Sounds like something you might hear in San Francisco, right?

Well, Indianapolis could use a bit more of that West Coast kind of thinking, especially when it comes to ensuring that every child in our community has the tools and the knowledge to grow up healthy. Now, a lot of kids have neither. That is particularly true in the urban core.

Growing Places Indy doesn’t do all of its programming in struggling neighborhoods. For example, it runs the Indy Winter Farmers Market and yoga classes at the City Market, and it holds meditation and Pranayama classes at Invoke Studio just north of Downtown. But, increasingly, the nonprofit is getting involved with low-income residents on the Near Eastside.

Growing Places Indy has not one, but two slow food community gardens on that side of town. One is at the Chase Near Eastside Legacy Center on the campus of Arsenal Tech and the other is in the Cottage Home neighborhood. The money raised from harvesting and selling vegetables from those gardens helps fund educational programs.

For example, the nonprofit ran two afterschool programs this year for mostly low-income youth on the Near Eastside. Each program had a theme. Students planted a vegetable of a particular color and cared for it for 10 weeks. Then they did a yoga practice designed to emphasize a particular “chakra,” or aspect of the body, related to the vegetable they chose.

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Again, some people might find it all a little hokey. But it seemed to work. The dozens of kids who attended learned new things about healthy eating and healthy living, so that’s progress.

Far more practical, though, was the basic cooking program that Growing Places Indy started this year at the Legacy Center. There were two classes — and both had a waiting list.

The reason is simple.

Gone are the days of home economics class as a school requirement. Many people, particularly in the urban core, don’t know how to cook because they have never learned. Instead, they live off cheap, sugary, fried and processed fare that’s easy to come by in the corner stores that line inner-city neighborhoods. And often, even the people who do cook opt for making unhealthy food because it’s filling, easy to make and can last long enough to feed a family over several days.

When we talk about making sure that children eat well, teaching parents to cook is often the missing ingredient. To change habits, we have to start with the basics. Growing Places Indy is one of the few organizations I’ve found in Indianapolis that’s attempting to fill that void.

The cooking program it offers uses vegetables and herbs grown in the Legacy Center garden. Participants are taught how to make quick, simple, healthy dishes from scratch. They also learn how to can food and, in some cases, how to grow it.

In 2014, Trueblood said the goal is to turn the cooking program into a family affair, instead of a series of classes for teenagers or adults. The new year also will bring the planting of an orchard near the Legacy Center, and possibly, a learning area so students from Tech can get even more of a hands-on experience in urban farming.

“You have to address the whole needs of the family,” she said, “and you have to translate the experience in the classroom into the needs of the household. The idea is to empower people to create change."

That’s what it takes to change habits. And that’s what it takes to change lives.

To donate

To donate to the Season for Sharing campaign, go to IndyStar.com/seasonforsharing. Your gifts will go to local charities that help feed hungry children, promote physical fitness and teach healthy lifestyles.